Juxtaposition
by CapturetheFinnick
Summary: Dan is desperately, and hopelessly in love with Phil. Phan. Angst. Trigger Warnings; blood, pain, unrequited love, sexual references, alcohol, betrayal and character death.


Every time I stare at Phil's lips it's like I'm falling into a chasm. A deep, dark hole that's both cold and warm, both full of fear and full of light, both comforting and terrifying. And every day the same words teeter on the edge of my lips like the boy on the edge of the cliff. His eyes spilling tears, his hands wrung, his coat clutching to what was left of his body. Hope already having fallen off the cliff, 'life' in all of its forms was over, just an aching body left to wander through the graveyard. But in the end the boy couldn't do it. There is always a part that wants to live, that fights to hang on, fingers clasping around the cliff edge. The boy was me. A few months later I found Phil. And my lips turned into their very own cliff, the words standing there night after night but never finding the urge to jump.

Because every time I become sure, a flash of doubt hits my mind like lightning and my mind fills with doubt. Life is filled with juxtaposition. A human can only ever feel two things at once. Can only ever look upon the stars and feel both wonder and fear. Can only ever feel the wonder of the world, the sheer beauty and mystery and an inherent sense of fear, a fear that you are one insignificant piece in an entire world, that one day the stars will all collapse, and all the world will catch alight. And that's what I feel when I look upon Phil, a sense of love so strong that I am scared that it will burn my heart to ashes, but a sense of fear even stronger, like a rope wrapping around my neck, pulling and pulling until I can no longer breathe. Juxtaposition. Inevitability.

There's a great quote from a book I once read. One that goes 'Civilisation's fear of nature. Men's fear of women. Power's fear of powerlessness.' And quotes like that are my favourite, because they hang like clouds above you, like a fog that has not cleared, like a square with no clear lines. The meaning is unclear. You can see whatever you like within the blur. And I choose to see juxtaposition. Because that's life. And that's what I fear the most. Nature is both above and below civilisation, civilisation destroys nature every day to make way for itself, and yet nature is held above anything else. A miracle, a wonder. And so civilisation becomes afraid of nature, because it is two things at once. And it's the same with the women, women are both lesser and divine all at once. Oppressed for years, called a lesser species and yet women are also perceived as divine goddesses for all to see; 'the face that launched a thousand ships'. And with power, power seems straight away the better option, the one you should pick when faced with a decision in a dark alleyway. But power brings pressure and pressure leads to spiralling defeat, and so powerlessness is both the better and the inferior option. Juxtaposition. I've been thinking a lot recently.

Because in reality, it should be all too simple. Because we both know that we are not 'just friends' but we deceive ourselves, we deceive ourselves every day as we have been doing for the past five years. We sit on opposite sofas and we don't question how both of us desperately crave to press our lips to each other's. Because this whole history swarms in front of us like black tar, like black tar sticking our lips together so we can no longer speak, keeping us glued to our separate sofas. To our separate rooms. It's just haze. A haze of drunk confessions that burned in the daylight, of kisses in moments of weakness that get hidden under the bed, of hugs that linger too long to be 'just friendly', of listening to Phil getting off through the wall and of joining in. This thick history. And sometimes I think if we hadn't been so clumsy, so sloppy, so awkward back in those conversations. If we hadn't hidden our feelings from each other, if we hadn't 'ignored them till they went away', tried to compress them into a tiny box labelled friendship, then maybe right now my arm would be snaked around the back of Phil's head, my fingers tangled within his hair. And maybe now I wouldn't be falling.

We've never discussed it. Our words have never hit the harsh air. It's like an elephant in the room that we ignore. But it's growing. And soon there won't be any room for us. The words 'we don't want to ruin what we have' swim through the air, surrounding us like a cloud of smoke. And yet what do we have? A guilty friendship? One filled with fear of reaching the other person's eyes. A relationship where both of us are in denial. One filled with wanting to leap over and denying myself time after time after time. Neither of us have fucked anyone in years. It wouldn't feel right. We have ownership of each other without ever touching each other. I wouldn't dare be with anyone else. But my eyes still bore into Phil's pale skin and I know that he knows but he won't look up, he won't acknowledge it. Because that's not what we do. We sit on separate sofas, hoping to preserve what we don't have, silently imagining each other as our hands run over ourselves. Drinking lies and watching it burn away in the sunlight.

And years pass as they always do, without an admission, without the boy jumping off the cliff, with life being filled with great lies, both of us climbing the mountain with no intention of ever taking different paths and yet we resort to stares. We push our feelings down like the lever for dynamite and yet nothing ever blows up. A continuous line of lying to ourselves.

And people look at us and they wonder whether we are together, whether we were, whether we ever will be. And nobody understands. They don't even know whether to joke. We hang round people, gravitating towards each other in every room, relishing in the lights of our smiles, and yet we go home to separate beds, to separate sofas.

Alcohol rages in my veins and the crowd grows thicker. My eyes scan for Phil. For his black hair shimmering under a light, or his gangly limbs dancing. It's automatic. Even when I am so drunk that my body feels like water, wobbling around till people keep pushing me, trying to stop my head from hitting the floor, I am gravitating towards him. Always him. Like I am the moon that orbits his earth, both of us unable to get closer, both us of us trapped in our separate sections and yet desperately wanting to be closer, to let my surface bash against his no matter what the cost. And the light is fading from my eyes as I feel my head hit the floor and nobody cares and everyone carries on dancing and in the final glimpses I see Phil talking to someone, a pretty girl who swishes her hair as if she's Maybelline's true daughter. And Phil is smiling. The smile I like to think he reserves for me, but here it is spilling onto her red hair like the lies that swarm my body, like my blood that leaks on the floor.

The light comes back and fresh sheets surround me. The room is too crisp, too clean, too cold it hurts my head to even stand and I want to cry out in pain but it has turned light outside and I don't know where I am. And I feel a lingering sense of betrayal and pain and I immediately grasp my phone and ring the only number my fingers know how to dial. The one I have dialled time and time again, each time the words wanting to spill out my mouth before diluting themselves into 'how are you?' and Phil picks up the phone and his voice seems cheery, like sunshine through the blinding pain and I can almost bring myself to smile, almost, but not quite, because there are two voices at the other end, a joint laughter like a harmony and Phil has his morning voice but someone else is there. And the pain blinds me as I throw my phone and the boy finally jumps off the cliff, taking his rotting heart over the edge until it the rocks slice through it, letting it burst open as blood covers the dulling rocks, like a chocolate dipped strawberry. And I want to cry but tears just won't come, they won't spill. And maybe it wasn't juxtaposition for Phil. Maybe he never felt two things when staring at the stars, maybe he only ever felt friendship when looking at me. And the glass case that embodies me cracks and shatter, slicing into my skin, the shards tearing at my veins and hitting my cheeks until I am sure I am dripping blood like tears.

And there comes a knock on the door and it swings open. And his black hair shines, but his eyes are not filled with the same stars when he looks at me, he has saved his constellations for someone else and now I want to be a star, I want to burst open into a flames and become nothing ever again. And he shakes his head slightly as he looks at me,

"What have you got yourself into?" but his voice is not filled with the same fondness and it never will be again. Because we are no longer teetering on the edge of the cliff, I have fallen and he still stands and he can't see the blood that covers me from head to toe and he can't see that he is talking to a corpse. Because I can't stand and when he carries me to his car, she is there, her red hair glimmering in the front seat as I shuffle into the back. And she turns round and her eyes are the most beautiful green and I want to cry and I want to scream for her to get away from me like a car alarm through the night because I am mud brown and she is a goddess of the sea, of the stars, and that's exactly how Phil is looking at her, I am a fallen star and she has taken my place in the sky, shining brighter than I ever could. And my mangled body lies on the rocks.

And I can barely bare to be in the house, their limbs tangled on the sofa and juxtaposition comes back to haunt me. Because I feel both hatred and gratitude when I look upon her. When I look upon her with her shimmering eyes like silver fish beneath the stream and her flowing hair like the flames I wish to burn myself within, because she took Phil, but she made him far happier than I ever could with my inherent dullness like an old coin compared to one circa 2015.

And I try to turn up the volume in my headphones as they fuck against the wall, but it becomes my whole life, filling my ears and I can imagine exactly what Phil looks like from those times that I used to stand by the door, watching him by himself, feeling both guilty and fulfilled. Because I was sure that one day it would be me in there with him. But her flowing red hair must be falling over his pale chest as his hands run over her back and it all becomes too much and I rip my headphones from the jack as tears spill from my eyes and I stumble down the hall, retching at the thought and out into the street and swiping my card and jumping onto the first tube without caring where it takes me as long as it is away from Phil. Phil who let my heart drop from the cliff and then left me bloodied and mangled. Phil who turned his back.

And then it is pitch black and the streets are lined with people shouting, people raving drunk and happy, or raving drunk and sad, emotions don't matter that much. Because I have finally shook the juxtaposition, I no longer feel two things when looking at the stars, when looking at the sea, when walking down the streets, I feel only the pain that burns a hole into my chest. And I fall through the door and into the pub as I fill my glass again and again with golden liquid before demanding something stronger, waiting and waiting for the click that doesn't come, for the click that turns my mind off, my heart off, until I can feel nothing. But shot after shot comes and goes and I can't walk, can't see, can't hear, can't do anything but feel the fire lick at my heart.

And so when her arm outstretches I take it. Because I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. And when I wake with her arms wrapped firmly around me I don't even squirm, I just gently remove them and stand up, throwing my filthy clothes and walking out the door. I feel nothing and I never will again.

Phil doesn't even notice when I return, he is too busy cooking, her hands clinging to him and a smile fondly written upon his lips.

And there is no night and there is no day. There is only the liquid that I tip down my throat and the beds I sleep in at night. I spend years of saving in one night. I let anyone and everyone fuck me. I become a regular, slung together with all the others who have lost hope, who spend their whole life drunk because sober it's just too hard.

And the rain slams against the pavement over and over again and my feet refuse to walk in a straight line and the cars fly past and I wonder how bad it would be. Maybe it would be the cure. And I am not a person as I step into the road, as the car hits me with a finalling slam, my body flying back and my back carving itself into the road and as I bleed into the blackness, as I feel my eyes going dark, and as my insides spill onto to the tarmac, I am still not a person. And I wonder whether Phil will ever know, and whether he will ever care. And as the darkness comes for me, I feel a peace wash over me, one second of relief before death outstretches his hands and grasps me in his arms.

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><p><strong><em>Yeah, pent up anger much? I literally just sat down and wrote this a few days ago like it literally just flowed and this is what you get. Little insight into how my mind goes (this was just supposed to be like a suppressed love with potential fluff ending but look where we are). Anyway, I got tickets to sitc the other day so that's super exciting! Thanks for reading and please review !<em>**


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